Microsoft Bing team today announced enhancements to the technical search terms mostly used by developers and students. They have made two main improvements, first is making code search & API reference easier on Bing and the second is Bing now understands developer queries containing non-alphanumeric characters.

One of the common tasks in a programmer’s life is learning about new APIs. The best way to learn about an API is to see a description and an example of how it is being used. More importantly, seeing the actual code is critical for programmers. In many cases, this information is buried in the API documentation requiring additional steps. In the above example a programmer queried for C# hashtable method. As you can see without even going into the MSDN page, user can know about the use this method, can even copy paste the code and start using it.

Technical developer queries often contain non-alphanumeric characters like :: (scope), ++ (operators), () (function), etc. Such queries are notoriously difficult for a search engine to handle. Bing has given special treatment to such technical queries, so that the context is preserved and we show relevant results on top.

Great features for developers like me who depend on search engine to learn new things everyday.